This invention relates to an apparatus for illuminating a display, and more particularly to an illuminator device based on Bragg gratings.
Recent developments in microdisplays and Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology are driving the development of a range of consumer applications such as compact projectors and thin form factor rear projection televisions. Current microdisplays employ a variety of technologies including liquid crystals, micro-mechanical mirrors (MEMs) micro-mechanical diffraction gratings and others. Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) are the most well-known examples. The most efficient method of illuminating microdisplays is to present red, green and blue illumination sequentially with the display image data being updated in the same sequence. Such procedures require that the display update rate is fast enough for the sequential single-color images to appear to the observer as a full color image.
Prior art illumination systems have employed color wheels which suffer from the problems of noise and mechanical complexity. FIG. 1 shows an example of a prior art illumination system. The illumination system comprises an incoherent light source 1001, condenser mirror 1002, focusing lens 1003, color wheel 1004, collimating lens 1005 and filter 1006. The ray directions are generally indicated by the arrowed lines 2000. A projection display would further comprise a microdisplay 1007 and a projection lens 1008 forming an image on a screen 1009. Illumination systems based on incoherent sources such as UHP lamps, for example, suffer from the problems of bulk, warm up time lag, high heat dissipation and power consumption, short lamp lifetime, noise (resulting from the color wheel) and poor color saturation.
Many of the above problems can be solved by using LED illumination. One commonly used illuminator architecture uses dichroic beam splitters known as X-cubes. The prior art illuminator shown in FIG. 2 comprises red, green and blue LED sources 1010a,1010b,1010c each comprising LED die and collimators, an X-cube 1011, focusing lens 1012, light integrator 1013, a further relay lens 1014 which directs light from the integrator onto the surface of a microdisplay 1015. The ray directions are generally indicated by the arrowed lines 2010. However, illuminators based on LEDs suffer from several problems. Although LEDs provide high lumen output they have large emittance angles, making the task of collecting and relaying light through the narrower acceptance cones of a microdisplay a very challenging optical design problem. LEDs require fairly large collimators, making it difficult to achieve compact form factors. LED triplet configurations using a shared collimation element suffer from thermal problems if the die are configured too closely. In the case of X-cube architectures such as the one shown in FIG. 2, the resulting image is barely bright enough, with the X-cube itself losing around one third of the light from the LEDs. X-cubes also present alignment, bulk and cost problems. Thus there exists a need for a compact, efficient LED illuminator for microdisplays.
Diffractive optical elements (DOEs) offer a route to solving the problems of conventional optical designs by providing unique compact form factors and high optical efficiency. DOEs may be fabricated from a range of recording materials including dichromated gelatine and photopolymers.
An important category of DOE known as an Electrically Switchable Holographic Bragg Gratings (ESBGs) is formed by recording a volume phase grating, or hologram, in a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) mixture. Typically, ESBG devices are fabricated by first placing a thin film of a mixture of photopolymerizable monomers and liquid crystal material between parallel glass plates. Techniques for making and filling glass cells are well known in the liquid crystal display industry. One or both glass plates support electrodes, typically transparent indium tin oxide films, for applying an electric field across the PDLC layer. A volume phase grating is then recorded by illuminating the liquid material with two mutually coherent laser beams, which interfere to form the desired grating structure. During the recording process, the monomers polymerize and the HPDLC mixture undergoes a phase separation, creating regions densely populated by liquid crystal micro-droplets, interspersed with regions of clear polymer. The alternating liquid crystal-rich and liquid crystal-depleted regions form the fringe planes of the grating. The resulting volume phase grating can exhibit very high diffraction efficiency, which may be controlled by the magnitude of the electric field applied across the PDLC layer. When an electric field is applied to the hologram via transparent electrodes, the natural orientation of the LC droplets is changed causing the refractive index modulation of the fringes to reduce and the hologram diffraction efficiency to drop to very low levels. Note that the diffraction efficiency of the device can be adjusted, by means of the applied voltage, over a continuous range from near 100% efficiency with no voltage applied to essentially zero efficiency with a sufficiently high voltage applied. U.S. Pat. No. 5,942,157 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,751,452 describe monomer and liquid crystal material combinations suitable for fabricating ESBG devices. A publication by Butler et al. (“Diffractive properties of highly birefringent volume gratings: investigation”, Journal of the Optical Society of America B, Volume 19 No. 2, February 2002) describes analytical methods useful to design ESBG devices and provides numerous references to prior publications describing the fabrication and application of ESBG devices. DOEs based on HPDLC may also be used as non-switchable devices. Such DOEs benefit from high refractive index modulations.
Typically, to achieve a satisfactory display white point it is necessary to provide significantly more green than red or blue. For example, to achieve a white point characterized by a color temperature of 8000K we require the ratio of red:green:blue light to be approximately 39:100:6. It is found in practice that providing adequate lumen throughput and white point simultaneously requires more than one green source. Although DOEs may be designed for any wavelength, providing a separate DOE for each source may be expensive and may lead to unacceptable attenuation and scatter when the elements are stacked. Methods for recording more than one grating into a hologram are well known. For example, one grating may be used to diffract light from two or more different sources. However such devices suffer from reduced diffraction efficiency and throughput limitations imposed by the etendue of a grating.
Another approach to combining light from more than one LED of a particular color is to exploit the angle/wavelength selectivity of Bragg gratings. High efficiency can be provided in different incidence angle ranges for different wavelengths according to the well-known Bragg diffraction equation. However, if we consider the wavelength ranges of typical sources the resulting incidence angle range will not be sufficiently large to separate the LED die. For example, if green sources with peak wavelengths at the extremities of the green band of the visible spectrum were provided the resulting incidence angles would differ by just a few degrees. This would make it at best extremely difficult to integrate the LED die and condenser optics into a compact package.
There is a requirement for a compact, efficient LED illuminator based on Bragg gratings.
There is a further requirement for a compact and efficient illuminator capable of combining two light sources having similar peak wavelengths using a single grating.
There is a yet further requirement for a complete color sequential illumination device in which light of at least one primary color is provided by means of a single grating that combines light from more than one source.